The River
by Lady Maria
Summary: Xover w the WWE. She is a Slayer...one of the current two. For two years, she Slayed on the Hellmouth. This is her story...


_A/N: This is an Alternate Universe.  Buffy died when Hemery burned down; that was when Kendra was Called.  This is another Slayer's tale; however she knew Willow and Xander because she lived in Sunnydale. I happened to borrow several plotlines from the Joss-verse and made them fit this one, simply because I liked them._

_Anyway, WWE belongs to itself or Vincent McMahon or whoever. BtVS belongs to Joss._

_This alternate universe in mine however since I know that Joss wouldn't even come up with this one._

**You know a dream is like a river**

**Ever changin' as it flows**

**And a dreamer's just a vessel**

**That must follow where it goes**

The twenty year old young woman sighed as she dusted another vampire.  She wasn't exactly certain why she still played this game.  There were others who did this, but it just seemed so natural. It felt like something real and needed in a world where sex was money. 

"You look like someone in need of a night's work," someone behind her commented as she slipped the stakes back into her hair as a sort of chopsticks.

She spun around, a plastic smile on her lips. "How much you got, baby?"

"How much do you charge?" he countered.

"Fifty for a quickie, hundred for getting you to cum," she bit off.

"Then I'll pay you a hundred," he agreed.

"Money up front," the brunette told him as they went into a nearby hotel, "or I don't work."

**Trying to learn from what's behind you**

**And never knowing what's in store**

**Makes each day a constant battle**

**Just to stay between the shores... and**

At fifteen, she'd run away from home.  Before then, she'd always wanted to become a teacher or doctor.  She'd dreamed of helping people somehow.

But out in the real world, away from her childhood home, she'd discovered that just surviving was a chore. She'd ended up here, on San Francisco's meaner streets.   She saved money from every job she did in an effort to set enough aside to open her own restaurant one day.

Sometimes, alright the majority of the time, she wondered if the past was enough to condemn her.   And other times she wondered if she should just let a vamp kill her.  Then she'd remember what had happened to Alya.

She was one of the older girls in the brothel when the seventeen year old brunette had arrived four years before.  The blonde haired hooker had once told her younger colleague that death was the only answer after a point in a street girl's life.

The next night the girl known as Charity had had to stake Alya after finding her snacking on a customer.

She didn't want that to happen to her.

**I will sail my vessel**

**'Til the river runs dry**

**Like a bird upon the wind**

**These waters are my sky**

**I'll never reach my destination**

**If I never try**

**So I will sail my vessel**

**'Til the river runs dry**

The brothel wasn't that bad, but she knew that her dreams would be half built ships, never actually being finished for as long as she stayed.  Charity could have gone back to one of her parent's home if she wanted, but it didn't feel right.

She wasn't their daughter anymore.   She was a child of the streets, and she would always have that part inside of her even if she were to leave.

And somehow, the brothel felt like more of a home than she'd ever experienced.  There were the crappy customers, of course, like the rich old pervert who owned some wrestling company, but there were the nice ones too.  There was one, he couldn't have been more than thirty, but every time he requested her, he would take her out for dinner and sometimes a movie.  Or sometimes she and Shane would spend the whole time talking. 

It was refreshing not to have to spread her legs for him.  She still couldn't believe that he was related to the pervert, Vincent McMahon.

**Too many times we stand aside**

**And let the waters slip away**

**'Til what we put off 'til tomorrow**

**Has now become today**

When she'd left home, she was just trying to get out of the crossfire.  Her parents blamed her for their other child's death at fifteen.  Sure she'd only been eleven, but she just had to have known something.

That was their reasoning anyway.  In reality she'd only known that her older sibling was a troublemaker.  She'd become an outcast, not that she minded, but for two years she'd hovered at the fringes.

At thirteen, Charity had been given a mantle of destiny, a heritage that almost guaranteed an early death.  She had become the Vampire Slayer.

Worse yet, her small town were built on the Mouth of Hell.  Ironically, said Mouth was located underneath the high school library.

That was her life until the fighting had driven her into the night.

**So don't you sit upon the shoreline**

**And say you're satisfied**

**Choose to chance the rapids**

**And dare to dance the tide... yes**

"Charity," Shane smiled as she slipped into the booth. 

"Hey." For once her trademark sexy drawl was gone. "What's new in your world?"

"My father's a bastard?" Shane McMahon ventured with a smirk.

"Not news," Charity countered.

"My sister slapped him."

"Good for her." Picking up the menu, the hooker rolled her eyes at the prices. "Shane, the prices they charge for food are higher than I charge for sex."

Her companion laughed at the waiter's shocked expression. As the young man scampered away to place their order, he grinned. "Hon, you get far too much pleasure from shocking people."

"A girl's gotta do something for laughs," she returned. 

"Char, you are something else." Shane shook his head.

"Is that a compliment or an insult?"

"I'm not certain," came the bemused reply.

**I will sail my vessel**

**'Til the river runs dry**

Slipping into the park at daybreak, she leaned against a tree trunk.  She wondered for the millionth time what her life would have been like if she had stayed after the graduation fiasco.  As if in answer, her mind flashed back across the years to a time when she was innocent.

**Like a bird upon the wind**

**These waters are my sky**

**I'll never reach my destination**

**If I never try**

**So I will sail my vessel**

**'Til the river runs dry**

****Sunnydale, 1999****

She looked over at her comrade, her sister in arms.  Willow Rosenberg wasn't the type of person anyone would suspect of being a witch of immense power. Quiet and bookish, the Jewish senior was the complete opposite of what anyone would expect a warrior to be.

"I can't believe that Faith went to Evil's side," the redhead commented idly.

The Slayer snorted. "I can't believe that she wanted everyone to think that I would kill someone.  I mean, honestly.  I was on the other side of town when it happened, patrolling with you no less."

"She didn't know that," Willow sighed, "which, when you think about it, was actually a good thing.  We caught her in the lie at least."

"She's like my destiny sister," the young woman sighed. "I mean, she died when that bitch vamp Darla drowned her the night that the Master died.  But Xander revived her, and then she goes and turns on us like this? How in the seven Hells does that make sense?"

"It doesn't." Dodging a crossbow one of the mayor's minions had just thrown at her, she snickered. "Guess we should get back to the fight, don't you think?"

"Since we are fighting to save the world…again, I guess we should," the brunette giggled, showing a warrior's grisly sense of humor as she had before.

**There's bound to be rough waters**

**And I know I'll take some falls**

**But with the good Lord as my captain**

**I can make it through them all... yes**

They had won the battle against the Mayor's Ascension that night. Willow had been the one to defeat the Rogue Slayer, which had activated a freshman girl, who shared some classes with the surviving Slayer.

Xander had blown the Mayor away by pumping four cartridges of machine gun fire into him.  And she herself had closed the portal that the Mayor had opened to bring his forces from the past to fight in the battle.

Slayer's blood was powerful stuff, and its power was enough to close portals, if the Slayer needed to use it to do so. Not that many of the Chosen ever lived long enough to figure it out, but Giles had known about the lore, and she'd put it into practice.

The day after the Graduation gone wrong, she'd told her fellow fighters that Eloisa could take her place. She needed out. 

They'd all known about her home life and weren't surprised by her announcement.  They'd told her that after two years of her life devoted to fighting the darkness she deserved a chance at normalcy. But underneath their carefully worded goodbyes, she could tell that they knew that she wasn't coming back.

Six years later, she straightened up, knowing that who she was might not have been who she would have chosen to be. But she didn't mind her life nearly as much as most 'in the life' did. 

It was just a job, and if she died, she died. It wasn't as though she wouldn't have died young anyway. 

Sighing to herself, she headed back to the place that she called home.

**I will sail my vessel**

**'Til the river runs dry**

**Like a bird upon the wind**

**These waters are my sky**

**I'll never reach my destination**

**If I never try**

**So I will sail my vessel**

**'Til the river runs dry**

"Hey Charity," Cassia called out, "you got visitors."

"The entertaining kind?" 

"Nope, but they did pay big bucks," the other hooker told her, offering a wad of hundreds.

"How many did you keep for yourself?"  Charity asked with a quirky grin.

"Three," Cass admitted.

"Then will you tell them that they aren't getting their money back, but they sure ain't getting to talk to me either?  I ain't interested in whatever they offerin'."  As always, her years on the streets slipped back in her voice now that she was nice and enraged.

"You're cold, Char," Cassia told her friend, years of wondering about the other girl coming to the forefront of her mind again.  It was very rare for Charity not to be so blasé about people, but she'd noticed the times that Charity never wanted visitors always came as the temperature changed from hot to chillingly cold and vise versa.

"Will you?" Charity asked again.

"'Course."

**Yes, I will sail my vessel**

**'Til the river runs dry**

**'Til the river runs dry **

She knew who had been waiting for her.  It wasn't her fault that she hadn't wanted to talk to her father.  Cass didn't know it since most years around this time, Hank Summers didn't show, but that man was her father.

He didn't like her much after Buffy died and Joyce had liked her even less. For almost four years she'd put up with the abuse, until she finally bolted.

And now, the one of the only times she remembered the life she'd led before being Charity was when winter passed into late spring because  Joyce came then. The other was when Hank came just before fall had almost ended and winter was fast approaching.

Only then did Charity the Vampire Slayer, and head call girl at Love's Work brothel, allow herself to remember her past life as Dawn Summers, sister to the Slayer Buffy Summers.


End file.
